London has been battered by 50mph winds that have felled trees and caused travel chaos. Powerful gusts swept across the capital as the Met Office issued a yellow "be aware" weather alert for most of the country.

Emerging countries remain a source of growth for smartphone vendors but consumers there flock to cheaper handsets, leaving smaller margins for the manufacturers. Samsung's division that makes and sells handsets, smartphones and tablet computers was the key force behind its latest run of record-setting profit. In 2012, the mobile division contributed 67% of overall operating profit.

The Galaxy S4, the latest iteration of its flagship smartphone, hit 10 million sales in the first month of its sales in May, making inroads as Apple did not refresh its iPhone and iPad. But some analysts including at JP Morgan Chase revised down their sales forecasts of the Galaxy S4 by more than 20%, expecting the handset's shipments after the first quarter of launch will weaken.

Many analysts also expect Samsung to mark down the prices of the Galaxy S4 in the autumn and winter quarters as rivals, including Apple, will release new models.

Samsung said the smartphone market might expand at a slower rate in the current quarter but it still plans to increase shipments. Samsung has also released variations of the Galaxy smartphone series to offer cheaper handsets and fend off competition from Chinese rivals.

The South Korean company is the world's largest smartphone maker. In the January-March quarter, it sold more smartphones than the next four vendors combined and one in every three smartphones sold in the period was made by Samsung, according to market researcher IDC.